


Starlight

by saltandrockets



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Forced Cohabitation, Holidays, M/M, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-05 00:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16799956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltandrockets/pseuds/saltandrockets
Summary: When negotiations with a strategically-important planet take an unexpected turn, Hux is forced to spend thirty days planetside with his co-commander, Kylo Ren.Though they’ve worked together for three years, they barely know each other. But in such close quarters, that’s bound to change.





	Starlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pattypixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pattypixie/gifts).



The sky above Tyed Kant was blazing with brilliant light, but Hux couldn’t enjoy the spectacle—not when he ought to be two systems away by now.

His own breathing seemed too loud inside the helmet of his enviro-suit; it gave him a claustrophobic feeling. As soon as he was alone in the hotel room, where the air was safe to breathe, he yanked it off.

Behind him, a door hissed open, reminded Hux that he was not actually alone—and wouldn’t be any time soon. “This is completely unacceptable,” he said. “Wildly inappropriate.”

“Not to them,” Kylo Ren replied, as he entered the hotel room. Rather than his bulky robes, he wore an enviro-suit that was identical to Hux’s, right down to the helmet that revealed his face. When he removed the helmet, he shook his hair back, looking annoyed. “We’re co-commanders. Partners, by their way of thinking. It would be an insult to put us up separately.”

Hux made a disgusted noise as he peeled off the enviro-suit. He wore his uniform underneath. “They can’t really expect us to abide by their absurd cultural practices,” he said.

“They do,” Ren said darkly. “We’re their guests. So you should play nice.”

“Don’t lecture me about playing nice.” Hux was bristling, despite himself. “How do you think I arranged this meeting in the first place?”

Tyed Kant was a barely-habitable gas giant. Floating cities drifted through the upper atmosphere, where the air was breathable but teeming with bacteria—necessitating the use of enviro-suits when outdoors. It had no natural resources, but produced tremendous quantities of cheap, aeroponically-grown foodstuffs.

The planet’s economy was built on exporting food to the Demophon system—but that system was destroyed decades ago, when its star went supernova. Tyed Kant had struggled ever since, desperate for a new market.

At last, they found one in the First Order. If Tyed Kant could produce enough food for a whole system, then surely it could feed an army of stormtroopers.

Despite its proximity to the Core, Tyed Kant was fairly remote: the only planet in the Kantel system, surrounded by gargantuan bands of orbiting dust and debris. The New Republic had paid little attention to this pocket of space after Demophon’s destruction and was unlikely to notice if Tyed Kant ramped up production again.

When Hux arranged to meet with the planetary governor, he had not intended to stay longer than three standard cycles. That was all the time he expected to need in order to conclude their business.

Only a modest contingent came planetside: Hux, Ren, and a small crew to pilot the shuttle. No stormtroopers accompanied them, so as not to give the wrong impression about why they had come. (Besides, Hux thought the Star Destroyer in orbit above the planet got the message across even better than a detachment of troopers.)

The meeting had gone according to plan, except for one thing.

The First Order contingent arrived just before the Starlight Festival, an important holiday which apparently lasted thirty standard days.

As Tyed Kant passed through the Kantel system’s debris belts, the planet’s protective shields were raised and the spaceports were closed except to emergency traffic. No crops were grown during this period and little work was done; instead, citizens spent thirty days feasting, shopping, drinking and watching the constant meteor showers.

Hux had known the holiday was coming, of course. The governor had specifically invited the meeting to take place during this period, suggesting it was an auspicious time to finalize their agreement.

It had not occurred to Hux that their departure might not qualify as a legitimate reason to use the spaceport where their shuttle ws docked. In hindsight, it was a gross miscalculation, one Hux would never repeat.

But in the meantime, he was stranded.

Their planetary hosts had arranged for lodging, of course. Hux and Ren were to stay together in a hotel near the heart of the city, in a single, well-appointed suite.

Hux had managed to mask his shock when he was informed of the arrangement, but it was a near thing. He protested politely, and then firmly, and then found he could protest no more—at least, not without damaging relations with the governor.

The suite was more than comfortable, with a sitting room, kitchen area and a refresher equipped with actual water, not just a sonic. By some miracle, the sleeping area had two beds, though there was no partition to separate them. Hux had a feeling that he would sleep poorly.

“Why are you so unbothered by this?” Hux asked. He’d anticipated an explosion from Ren, like any other time something didn’t go according to plan. But from the moment they learned they would be trapped here for a month, he’d been unsettlingly calm.

“Because there’s nothing to be concerned about,” Ren replied. He was taking off his own enviro-suit. Underneath, he wore a simple dark tunic and pants, rather than the standard officer’s uniform Hux had suggested. It was a little strange to see him like this, without his mask and robes. “This is where we’re supposed to be—for the success of the mission. I’ve sensed it.”

“You know I don’t believe in that,” Hux said.

“Believe what you like. It makes no difference.”

Suddenly, Hux imagined listening to Ren prattle about the Force for the next thirty days and had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. He could already feel a headache coming on.

A month in close quarters with Kylo Ren.

He had a bad feeling about this.

***

The first week was tolerable.

Hux could do a fair amount of work remotely. He appeared in meetings via holocomm and received all the usual updates and reports to his datapad, though the constant atmospheric fires sometimes caused frustration interference and delays.

He did not leave the hotel, or even venture to the restaurants downstairs, instead ordering all meals to the suite. Their planetary hosts were footing the bill, so he might as well.

Beyond the inconveniences of remote work, being physically absent from the  _ Finalizer _ made him more nervous than he would admit. It was rare for him to be away for longer than a standard week, and even then, only on official business. He had accumulated weeks of shore leave, which he would probably never take. Not until the war was won, at least.

His presence on the  _ Finalizer _ was critical. The officers and stormtroopers were used to seeing him: on the bridge, in the hangar, in exercise rooms where troopers did their combat training. They recognized him. He was visible and accessible to them in a way that their distant, mysterious Supreme Leader was not—and one day, that would be useful to Hux.

He reminded himself that the prerecorded propaganda reels were still running daily. It wasn’t as if his army would forget his face after a few weeks. The stormtroopers would remember the voice they’d been conditioned to obey. When he returned, they would still be loyal.

Ren, meanwhile, seemed maddeningly unbothered by the situation. When he wasn’t loitering around in the suite, he was making use of the hotel’s gymnasium or exploring Paragon City dressed in a standard enviro-suit.

Possibly, he was checking in with the Supreme Leader, via comm or through other, more mysterious means. But if so, Hux knew nothing about it.

By the second week, Hux was itching to leave. He fantasized now and then about ordering the  _ Finalizer _ to blast a hole through the planetary shields, then taking Tyed Kant by force.

But that would be a waste of time and resources, of course. It was the kind of thing Ren might do, like when he ordered the elimination of an entire village to cover up a few messy kills, and then the neighboring village as well, to make sure there were no witnesses.

“You’re not exactly making the best impression on our hosts, either,” Ren said, accusingly. He was standing

Hux looked up from his datapad with a scowl. He wasn’t sure if Ren had actually read his thoughts just now—to his knowledge, Ren couldn’t invade his mind without him noticing—or if he’d merely sensed the shape of them: uncharitable toward Ren.

“And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” Hux asked.

“The Tyed Kantians invited us here during their most important holiday so we can sample all that they have to offer,” Ren said. “They’re trying to show what a valuable ally they could be to the Order.”

“As if the Order has any interest in this planet beyond its material goods,” Hux replied with a scoff. “Tyed Kant is barely habitable. It has no natural resources to speak of. And for a month out of every year, it’s totally inaccessible.”

Ren shook his head. “But they have one thing that we need. Before they let us have it, they want us to engage with their culture—show a deeper interest in partnership. That’s what I’ve been doing. Meanwhile, you’ve spent a week holed up in the hotel.”

“Working,” Hux fired back. “Unlike someone I could mention.”

“Diplomacy is work,” Ren replied quickly.

“Diplomacy?” Hux almost laughed. Ren wasn’t exactly known for his negotiation tactics. He was an enforcer, the Supreme Leader’s psychic thug. “That’s rich, coming from you. What do you know about diplomacy?”

Ren opened his mouth, as if to protest, then hesitated. “The governor hasn’t signed the agreement yet,” he said at last. “And she won’t, if you keep this up.”

Hux felt his jaw clench. “If negotiations fail, it won’t be on me.”

“You can explain that to the Supreme Leader,” Ren said coolly. “I’m sure he’ll be interested in your excuses. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working to get your precious aeroponic food.”

“Oh, is that what you call it?” Hux asked, voice dripping sarcasm, as Ren went to collect his enviro-suit.

Hux turned back to his datapad, where the most recent report from the  _ Finalizer _ was slowly downloading. By the time he could access it, another report would probably have been sent; he’d ordered a status update every thirty minutes.

So far, it seemed all was well about the  _ Finalizer _ . Maybe he could spare an hour—make an appearance, as Ren had been doing, simply so that no one could say he hadn’t.

Visible and accessible. Just like on the  _ Finalizer. _

Grimly, Hux went to put on his enviro-suit.

***

The floating city of Paragon was home to ninety percent of the planet’s population: eleven million residents, most of them human. Though massive repulsorlifts kept the city suspended in the upper atmosphere, where the air was breathable, airborne bacteria meant that enviro-suits had to be worn at all times.

That was part of why Hux was reluctant to leave the hotel; he preferred air that had been scrubbed clean. The people of Tyed Kant might not mind donning the enviro-suits just to run their errands, but he did.

Annoyingly, Ren didn’t seem to mind the suit, either. Hux assumed this was because he spent most of his time enveloped in layered robes, with that ridiculous mask on his head.

“What are you looking at?” Ren asked, as they made their way through the lobby and emerged onto the street. It was nearly dusk, and the sky was streaked with light.

Hux realized he’d been studying Ren’s face too closely. He didn’t look away, though; it wasn’t as if he were guilty of anything. “Your mask,” he said. “You wore it during the meetings, but you haven’t been wearing it in public. Why?”

Ren paused. “It matters less here,” he said.

“It probably wouldn’t fit under the enviro-suit, anyway,” Hux muttered, knowing it would make Ren frown. He’d always thought the mask was a little much, personally, a bit too evocative of Darth Vader. But he supposed that was the point. “You don’t wear it in the hotel, either.”

“Why bother? You already know what I look like,” Ren said.

When they met, three years ago, Ren did not yet have the mask, nor the robes. He had only a name and a title, neither of which meant anything to Hux yet.

Hux remembered being almost startled when he laid eyes on his new co-commander for the first time. Ren had looked impossibly young, nothing like the apprentice he had imagined—twenty-four, maybe, and barely grown into his features. He also looked muted and furious, his whole body pulled tight, in a way that Hux found both unsettling and intriguing: like he might crack apart at any moment.

He still seemed that way sometimes.

The hotel was located in the Freemarket, a wide boulevard that circled the edge of Paragon, about five kilometers in diameter. Hux soon understood how Ren had managed to waste days exploring this area: The Freemarket was massive. It contained warehouses, shops, banks, hotels, restaurants, garages that specialized in both speeder and droid repair, and countless other facilities.

With the better part of eleven million citizens off work for the duration of the Starlight Festival, the street teemed with people. Restaurants with outdoor seating were packed, and food carts did brisk business with passersby.

Hux noticed right away that everything for sale in the Freemarket was obscenely expensive, costing about three times what he would expect to pay anywhere else in the galaxy—except for food, which was cheap.

Food, of course, was just about the only thing that could be produced on Tyed Kant. Everything else, from fuel to building materials to textiles, must be imported from offworld. The planet’s remote location made it costly.

“You think this holiday is extravagant,” Ren said, when he and Hux had to step around a tangle of people standing in the middle of the walkway, necks craned toward the sky. They were marveling at the meteor shower, as if it weren’t a yearly occurrence.

“Because it is,” Hux replied. In fact, it bordered on obscene. “Shutting down production for an entire planet to celebrate atmospheric fires—it’s typical Republican excess.”

“It’s cultural. Unique to this planet.”

Hux was sure Ren was saying these things just to be contrary. He suppressed a frown, refusing to be goaded. “What do you make of it, then?”

Ren tipped his head back to see the sky: darkened, streaked with light. “I think it’s peaceful,” he said at last.

Shaking his head a little, Hux kept walking. He had long since given up on understanding Ren.

***

There was a pool in the hotel gymnasium.

Hux discovered this near the end of their third standard week on Tyed Kant, when he was forced to share an elevator with a pair of damp-haired young women who both smelled strongly of the chemicals used to treat water for swimming.

A shared pool, Hux thought with a hint of distaste, was as extravagant as it was unhygienic.

When the women stepped off the elevator, three floors below Hux’s, the scent of chemicals seemed stuck in his nose. It had been years since he’d been in a pool, of course, and decades since he’d gone swimming in a natural body of water. He went planetside so rarely.

Arkanis. That was the last time, and the only time. The lake near the academy grounds. He could see it from the single window in the little room where he’d spent the earliest years of his life: deep gray, the same color as the droids his mother repaired for a living. The lake rippled with almost endless rainfall, shifting like a live thing. It had a certain smell, different from saltwater seas and chemically-treated pools.

Hux had his first swimming lesson in the cold shallows of that lake, on what passed for a summer day, when his mother had the afternoon off. He couldn’t have been older than four.

He’d almost forgotten that.

By the time he’d returned to the suite, the scent had faded, but the strange feelings it dredged up remained.

***

It was late in the night cycle, and Hux couldn’t turn off his mind enough to sleep. That wasn’t a problem, usually. He could cram in a few more hours of work until exhaustion took over. But he wasn’t sharp enough to focus; the text on his datapad kept blurring and sliding in front of his eyes, as if evading him.

Ren had left the suite more than an hour ago. He didn’t say where he was going, and Hux didn’t ask. But now he was keenly aware of the emptiness of the rooms that Ren had shared with him for the last three weeks.

It wasn’t familiar, like the quiet, controlled solitude of his quarters on the  _ Finalizer _ . Rather, it was unsettling.

Hux dressed and went downstairs.

The pool was empty at this time of night, but still accessible with a swip of his room key. His footsteps echoed across the polished floor as he made his way to the edge of the water, which was perfectly still, so clear he could see the patterned tile at the bottom of the pool.

The smooth, mirrorlike surface of the water threw his reflection back at him, distorted. Suddenly he wondered if learning to swim on Arkanis was a true memory, or something he’d stitched together from other sources: holovids, little details he’d been told about his life before the Unknown Regions and the Order. Did it really happen that way, or had he only wanted it to?

In the end, he supposed, it didn’t matter how he had learned to swim. It came back as easily as anything.

He swam from one end of the pool to the other, back and forth, at a leisurely pace. Eventually, he turned onto his back and let himself float. The weightlessness was strange and familiar all at once.

He drifted like that for a while, eyes half-closed, hearing nothing but the soft sloshing of the water and the dull thumping of his heart in his ears.

Something moved above him: a shadow. Or maybe he only thought it did. When Hux opened his eyes, he saw Ren, standing at the edge of the pool, wearing the athletic clothes that usually heralded a trip to the gym. Hux quickly righted himself.

“You know how to swim?” Ren’s voice echoed across the water, too loud.

“Of course I do. It’s a basic survival skill,” Hux said, defensive despite himself. He felt weirdly exposed: treading water, Ren studying him with those strange dark eyes. “Where have you been?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Ren said, like that explained anything. Hux already knew what he’d been doing, of course: working out. He wondered, without meaning to, what was keeping Ren awake tonight. “We don’t teach stormtroopers to swim. It’s not part of the training program.”

“Well, I’m not a stormtrooper. Obviously.”

“No.” Ren’s mouth lifted, just a little. “You’re not.”

Hux swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out, dripping water on the tiles. He began to briskly towel himself off; when he was done, Ren still lingered, like he was looking for something.

This close, Hux could just barely catch the scent of sweat clinging to Ren’s skin. It should’ve disgusted him, but it didn’t. Instead, he was acutely aware of his own body: pale and freckled and largely uncovered. He felt a drop of water slide along his throat, cold against his suddenly too-warm skin.

“I thought you grew up on a starship,” Ren said. “That’s all.”

“I grew up all sorts of places,” Hux told him.

Ren hummed, thoughtful. “Me, too,” he said, and bent to pick up Hux’s clothes off the tile floor.

When Hux glanced back at the gently-rippling water, he saw the two of them reflected: just the shapes of them, but real.

***

It was getting late, and Ren was in the lounge area, watching the holoset at an obnoxious volume. A podrace, by the sound of it: screaming crowds, roaring engines, commentators babbling in overlapping languages.

Hux, meanwhile, was poring over expense reports. The background noise was distracting. Eventually, he called, “Turn it down, will you?”

“No,” Ren said immediately.

Hux grappled with the brief, powerful urge to pitch his datapad at his co-commander’s head. “Then at least put on something less inane.”

Ren huffed. “Like what? Seriously,” he added, after a moment’s consideration. “I can’t imagine what you might consider good HoloTV. Do you even watch anything other than your own propaganda?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Hux said. He was a little offended, despite himself.

Ren made a noise that was alarmingly close to a laugh. “You pick something, then, if your taste is so superior.”

Sighing through his nose, Hux rose from the desk, hitched his robe closed and marched into the sitting room. It had felt strange to be out of uniform around Ren, in the beginning. But by now, in the fourth week of their forced cohabitation, he no longer cared about Ren seeing him in his sleeping clothes. It was unavoidable.

Ren was growing similarly comfortable: He’d taken to wandering around the suite in lounge pants and an undershirt, and sometimes even less. The former was how Hux found him, with his bare feet propped up on the coffee table and a can of eble beer in one hand.

With a mystical, and probably exaggerated, wave of his hand, Ren floated the holoset remote over to Hux, who snatched it out of the air.

Flipping through the seemingly endless stations, beamed out from the nearest Republic system, Hux found little of interest. Talk shows featuring celebrities from the Core. Holonews. Reruns of “Ryloth Place.” Sporting matches. An old holodrama starring Harlan Ottekvar.

He lingered on a costume drama set in the Old Republic. Two women garbed in distinctly Nabooian clothing were having a whispered conversation, their hands clasped.

“I didn’t peg you for a historical romance fan,” Ren said.

“I’m not,” Hux said, changing the station. Realizing this might take a while, he sat on the end of the couch, opposite Ren. “It just reminded me of something I watched years ago.”

To his surprise, Ren paused, beer half-lifted to his mouth. “When?”

Hux hesitated. Then he said, “The early days, in the Unknown Regions. We didn’t have anything like this—only whatever data tapes people happened to have with them when they were evacuated. A lot of Imperial propaganda films, naturally. Some historical holodramas. The tapes all got copied and passed around.”

Ren’s eyebrows arched. “And you actually watched them?”

“It was just about the only entertainment we had,” Hux said crisply.

“I can’t picture it,” Ren said, looking at him sidelong. “You, a kid, watching holovids on a Star Destroyer somewhere.”

Back then, the tapes were the only thing Hux had for himself. He used to be secretive about his little collection. Brendol would’ve destroyed the tapes if he knew Hux had them; Rae might’ve thought them a waste of time. Hux watched the tapes in the middle of the night cycle, at a low volume, only when he was sure his father was asleep.

“I used to buy crates of bootleg data tapes from junk shops in the Outer Rim,” Hux admitted. It started when he was a young teenager, no longer sharing quarters with Brendol, and continued into his early adulthood, when he no longer had the time to roam around spaceports. “I never recognized the titles, so I didn’t know what to expect when I watched them.”

“But you liked them,” Ren said. His eyes were dark as he studied Hux, but not menacing. “Not the holos themselves. Not all the time. You just liked getting to see them. It felt…”

_ Exciting, _ Hux thought, without meaning to, half wondering if Ren could read it on the surface of his thoughts, or just sense the shape of it.  _ Freeing. Special. _

“It was educational. I learned about Republic culture from watching their entertainment,” Hux said primly. That was mostly a lie, of course, and Ren probably suspected. He searched out and watched the holos because he wanted to, no other reason than that. “There was one in particular that taught me a great deal about how they’d rewritten the history of the war.”

“What was it called?”

“‘Han Solo in the Lair of the Space Slugs.’”

Ren choked on his drink.

“Ah, so you’ve seen it?” Hux asked. He had only seen it once himself, having destroyed the tape shortly after viewing it. At the time, he was paranoid that he might someday be caught with materials that glorified a prominent rebel.

“Years ago.” Ren’s voice was slightly strangled. “They made a bunch of adventure holos like that after the war. He had a licensing deal with some holoproducer.”

“Well, it was dreck,” Hux said. “Cheaply-made propaganda, with a weak script.”

“That’s Han Solo for you,” Ren muttered. He took a few deep swallows of his drink, as though fortifying himself. “Will you pick something already?”

After some consideration, Hux selected “Airtaxi Driver,” a holodrama that he and Ren had both seen before. It felt strange to have anything in common with Ren, even something so simple.

They spent the next two hours in an oddly companionable silence, holograms glowing over them.

Hux couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this: simply watched a holo, without a datapad in his hand or some other form of work in front of him. Years, probably.

When the movie was over, Ren picked up the remote and selected another. Hux got up, but only to make tea in the small kitchen. Then he returned to the sitting room and sat in the semidarkness with Ren.

***

“So the admiral said to the Hutt, ‘Nee choo? I hardly know you!’” Hux concluded, gesturing with a half-eaten crab-stuffed creampuff.

Ren choked a little on his drink, coughing and laughing into his hand at the same time, shoulders shaking with the force of it.

The joke wasn’t even the funniest in Hux’s repertoire (he had quite the collection of bawdy jokes, gathered during his days as a cadet and then a young officer), but they had both been drinking.

Almost three hours ago, another walk around the Freemarket had led them into this crowded noodle shop. Hux had mentioned that he’d never eaten Mon Calamarian food before, which Ren said was unacceptable.

Shops and restaurants in Paragon were all equipped with airlocks at the entrance, so customers could remove their enviro-suits indoors. It was a relief to be free of the thing when they sat down together; though the suits were made to be as lightweight as possible, Hux still found them annoyingly restrictive. It was warm enough in here that he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.

The food was cheap, and so was the alcohol, and they’d had a little too much of both. By now, Hux felt pleasantly loose. The air was thick with the smells of cooking food. Around them, dozens of conversations overlapped: unimportant, like background music.

“Since when do you have jokes?” Ren asked when he’d caught his breath, around a mouthful of food. He was flushed along his cheekbones from the hull-stripper he’d been drinking. His dark hair was mussed; he’d plowed a hand through it while telling Hux a story about a humorous misunderstanding with a trader who only spoke Bocce.

“Are you really so shocked?” Hux asked. He found himself distracted by Ren’s hair: wanting to smooth it back into place, make it orderly.

Ren snorted. “I thought maybe you were born without a sense of humor,” he said. “Three years, and I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh before tonight.”

“Yes, well—” Hux lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t really do this.”

“What?”

“This,” Hux said, gesturing vaguely between them to encompass the plates they’d shared, covered in spatters of oil and half-eaten food. He groped for the word, feeling a little fuzzy around the edges. “Socializing.”

He realized it was true as the words left his mouth. When was the last time he shared a meal with anyone like this, in a remotely casual setting? Maybe never.

Ren scoffed. “Sure you do.”

“No—”

“You’re doing it right now,” Ren pointed out. “With me. Why?”

Hux’s mouth opened, but he had no answer. At least, not one that made sense. “I don’t have much choice, do I?” he replied instead.

To avoid Ren’s gaze, he reached for the pink nebula he’d been drinking (Ren had snickered at the name when Hux ordered it, but changed his mind after he stole a sip). At the same moment, Ren moved to grab another creampuff off the edge of Hux’s plate.

Their hands brushed, just barely.

Before this trip to Tyed Kant, Hux had had never seen Ren’s hands. His face, yes, many times. But never his bare hands. Ren’s skin was warm to the touch. As human as anything.

When Hux looked up, Ren was watching him, dark-eyed.

“You surprised me,” Ren said. “That’s all.”

“I thought you could read minds,” Hux replied.

“Not yours. Well—not yet.”

Hux raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

“We’ll see what happens after a few more of these pink drinks,” Ren said, and his smile looked like a challenge. Then he flagged down the serving droid and ordered two more pink nebulas, one for each of them.

***

On the last day of the Starlight Festival, thirty days after the First Order contingent landed on Tyed Kant, the planetary governor signed the trade agreement.

The meeting went even more smoothly than Hux had expected. After a month of exploring Paragon with Ren, he was able to speak thoughtfully and flatteringly about the city, which pleased the governor. It seemed that Ren knew something about diplomacy, after all.

The starport wouldn’t reopen until morning, when the planet had passed out of the belt of stellar debris. After a month in limbo, it seemed only right to spend their last night on Tyed Kant celebrating this victory.

Hux and Ren stopped for Mandalorian food on the way back to the hotel. Hux had eaten this cuisine before, as a cadet, which seemed to surprise Ren.

Once they’d returned to the suite and shucked their enviro-suits, it was Hux’s turn to be surprised: Ren went to the wet bar and fixed them a couple of bantha blasters.

“To the Order,” Ren said, lifting his glass, which almost made Hux smile. It was rare for Ren to speak in such a way. Though he served the Supreme Leader, he was not part of the Order—not the way Hux was.

“To our… partnership,” Hux added, after a moment’s consideration.

They clinked their glasses together.

After they had both taken a drink, Ren appeared to notice something just over Hux’s shoulder. He raised his eyebrows. “Get a load of that,” he said, moving toward the wide window in the sitting room.

Hux turned and joined him in front of the window. Paragon sprawled out beneath them, glowing, the streets full of people making the most of the last night of the Starlight Festival. But that wasn’t what Ren wanted him to see.

Far above the floating city, a number of massive creatures drifted through the darkened sky. Lagoin, a species native to this planet, which floated among the gaseous clouds. Hux had read about them, even ordered a lagoin steak in a restaurant on a whim (it was unpleasant), but had yet to see a live specimen before tonight.

Ovoid in shape, the lagoin had gelatinous bodies and many tentacles, which they used like paddles. Each one had a single huge eye that seemed to slide around on the surface of its body. The creatures could be as small as a few centimeters in length; others grew much larger. Hux estimated that the largest in this group was around sixty meters long.

For a moment, Hux and Ren watched in silence as the creatures drifted through the sky, tentacles billowing gently, eyes rolling across the surfaces of their bodies.

“They’re hideous,” Hux said at last.

“Yeah,” Ren agreed. He took another deep swallow from his glass and set it aside.

“But they’re also…”  _ Mesmerizing, _ Hux thought, with their semitranslucent skin and surprisingly serene presence.

Maybe Ren heard him, because he said, softer, “Yeah.”

“Have they been floating around up there all this time? How have I gone six weeks without noticing them?” Hux wondered out loud.

“It’s because you never look up,” Ren said. A month ago, Hux would’ve snarled at the perceived insult—but now, he listened. “You’re so focused on what’s directly in front of you that you miss other things.”

“Such as?” Hux raised his eyebrows.

“There’s been a meteor shower going on for a month,” Ren said, in a flat voice. “When’s the last time you looked at the stars?”

Hux gave a quiet huff. “I see them all the time, Ren.”

“Through viewports. On charts. It’s not the same.”

“Yes, well—” When he turned, lifting his gaze, Ren’s eyes were dark and bright. He was looking at Hux like he was searching for something. Hux’s pulse kicked up, and he wondered if Ren could sense it. “I’m looking now.”

The moment floated. In the end, Hux wasn’t sure who shifted or who yielded. Maybe it was both of them, in the space of the same heartbeat.

Their lips brushed, as soft and helpless as smoke moths bumping against a light.

Hux’s heart stumbled painfully before picking up double-time. Then Ren cupped Hux’s face between his hands and brought their mouths together again. His hands were rough, calloused, but warmer than Hux would’ve imagined.

Ren kissed the way he flew a TIE fighter: with a recklessness that made Hux’s head swim and his heart slam against his ribs. Hux kissed him back, hard and demanding. He reached up to grab Ren’s wrists and hold him in place, close enough to feel what he was feeling.

“Pfassk,” Ren breathed, when at last they broke apart. Their faces were still pressed close, curved into each other. Ren’s voice was a little unsteady, and Hux was glad, because it meant he wasn’t the only one who’d been thrown off-balance. “We could’ve been doing that this whole time.”

“No,” Hux said. His mouth felt pleasantly bruised. He knew he was right: If Ren had approached him six weeks ago, he would’ve refused him in disgust, and Ren would’ve surely done the same. They had been co-commanders, nothing less and nothing more, until circumstances brought them together in a more intimate way. There was no other world in which the two of them could’ve discovered each other like this. “But…”

“But?” Ren touched a hand to Hux’s lower back, questioning.

Hux drew back far enough to get a look at Ren: eyes dark, mouth red. Behind him, through the viewport, the last handful of shooting stars burned across a black sky. “We have until morning.”

**Author's Note:**

> a note for pattypixie: from your wishlist, I focused on canonverse, first times and slow burn (well, as slow-burn as a short fic can be). since this is a holiday fandom event, I also wanted to write something vaguely holiday-themed.
> 
> I hope you like it! happy holidays. xoxo


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